Hello, lovely humans! When was the last time you took a break? And we don’t mean napping from exhaustion or sitting down for a second to breathe. We mean a break, where you just let your mind rest. When your heart wasn’t racing and your mind wasn’t wandering between to-do lists.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, where hustle culture is almost the norm, it can be hard to spare time for yourself without feeling immense guilt and fear of missing out. After sitting for hours on Instagram and scrolling through reels, unproductiveness takes over. 

What if I told you that the times you feel like wasting your time away are beneficial and even make you healthier and more productive? Well, maybe not mindlessly scrolling through reels, but spending time with your friends, reading a new book, learning a new recipe, drawing, painting, or just breathing and not thinking about all the tasks you have to be doing can increase your mental well being immensely and make you more productive when you need to be!

Why Having Fun Changes Everything

The network of neurons in your brain gets stronger the more you do something. So when you wake up in the morning, brush my teeth, go to work, type away on my computer, come back home, stare aimlessly at a screen, and then go to sleep, just to repeat it all the next day, and the next day, and the day after that, the way your brain works becomes permanent! 

However, the more we engage with various other activities (even if we feel as though we aren’t being mentally stimulated), the many neural pathways in our brain get activated and strengthened. If the activities we take part in are mentally challenging, it is even better! Puzzles, Sports, Art, and Music require multiple parts of the brain to connect, making us more resilient.

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It has been shown that leisure activities positively impact your motivation during work as well. Several studies indicate that since our attention span is naturally limited, taking breaks is crucial for learning well. Short rest intervals give us the energy and new perspective we need to carry out our daily chores with renewed vigour. They also assist our minds in regrouping and processing information.

Why Is It so Hard? - Barriers to Leisure

Most of us already know that taking breaks, having fun, and stimulating our brains in different ways if important. So why can’t we do it? Why is it that we get so jittery and feel so guilty when we spare time for ourselves? 

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In today's day and age we don’t just hustle, we take part in multiple side hustles as well, because we have started equating our productivity with our worth.  We are often afraid to slow our lives down for fear of missing out on the next opportunity that comes our way. We are always so apprehensive about having fun. After a certain age and a certain grade, schools and other social structures prioritise academics over play and extracurriculars, and as much as we criticise it, we internalise the same mindset. Another possibility is that work and play have merged into one another and are no longer distinguished from one another because our identities are so embedded in the things we do.

Making Time for Leisure and Examples! 

Any form of relaxation, while being detached from work, and ideally detached from screens, counts as leisure time. Slow mornings have been shown to lead to productive days, and healthier mental well-being, and unwinding before going to sleep ensures a reduction in feelings of stress and anxiety. 

Photo by  Joe Caione Team  on  Unsplash

Here are some ideas to unwind and give your lovely soul the rest it deserves: 

Take Care of Yourself - Work Is Important, but So Are You!

At Heart It Out, Office Parties and the Buddy Circle are ways that help us unwind, forget about work, and just have some enjoyment. How we spend our time does matter, but that doesn’t mean we need to run about making sure we’re being worn down by the world around us; it means we take the world and soak it in by taking care of ourselves, slowing down, and having fun.